Bumblebee Lays the Smackdown in New Transformers 5 Image

Bumblebee takes out an unmanned robot in a new Transformers: The Last Knight image. The upcoming fifth installment in the ongoing Transformers franchise is meant to usher in a new era. Shortly after Age of Extinction hit theaters in 2014, Paramount Pictures formed a writers’ room of some of the top talents in the industry whose job would be to come up with ideas for future installments — including spinoffs and prequels — thereby creating a shared universe for the Transformers franchise.

Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) led the new writing team and also created the story for The Last Knight along with Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down), Art Marcum (Iron Man), and Matt Holloway (Iron Man), which Michael Bay says will help get the franchise “back in the groove.” The studio has been ramping up marketing the for the new movie in recent weeks, as we start to get closer to its release. And today we have yet another look at one of the many battles that will surely unfold in Bay’s signature style.

Paramount Pictures has released a new Transformers: The Last Knight image through Empire Magazine, which shows Bumblebee destroying an unmanned robot amidst a conflagration (below). Though a new photo, you can see the image’s events unfold around the 1:29 mark in The Last Knight‘s first trailer.

Bumblebee Lays the Smackdown in New Transformers 5 Image

Bumblebee hasn’t been in a good place for most of The Last Knight‘s marketing campaign. We’ve typically seen the lovable Autobot coming close to losing his duel with Optimus Prime. Even the latest posters show Optimus defeating and standing over Bumblebee, presumably about to kill his friend and former ally. Those posters go a long way to support the theory that Optimus will rebuild himself using Bee’s parts at some point in the movie. If that happens, then we don’t know what that means for next year’s Transformers spinoff.

While the upcoming fifth Transformers film is the first project to come out of the franchise’s writers’ room, next year’s Bumblebee movie will be the series’ first spinoff, which will presumably determine if Paramount will continue expanding the ongoing narrative. It will be directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings), based on a script by Christina Hodson (Shut In).

Aside from that, there isn’t much that we know about the movie. After testing the waters with the last installment, The Last Knight takes the Transformers franchise in a new direction this summer. There’s a lot riding on the release, for we already know the studio has plans for over a dozen more movies. We’ll just have to wait and see if it can live up to the studios (as well as audiences) expectations.